The Kabul Bureau’s Accidental Gardener

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KABUL, Afghanistan — Seven years in the past the gardener for the Kabul bureau of The New York Times, Sher Ahmad, collapsed on the garden of a coronary heart assault. Uncle Sher, because the workers affectionately referred to as him, was wizened and white-haired however solely 60; he died within the ambulance on his solution to the hospital.

His son Zamir Ahmad Amiri was then a university scholar learning agriculture at Kabul University. Zamir got here to us and requested for his father’s job as a result of the household had no different technique of assist. We agreed reluctantly, as a brief measure, for the reason that younger man had no actual expertise, aside from often serving to his father rake leaves. And our modest-sized backyard didn’t actually justify the indulgence of a full-time gardener.

Gardens are considered one of Kabul’s secret pleasures. The metropolis is on a excessive desert plateau, however behind all these blast partitions and tacky fashionable buildings, many Kabul houses cover luscious blooms: fruit bushes and vegetation that flower for months on finish. With 300 days of sunshine a 12 months, issues develop with gusto as long as there may be water, and our authentic bureau had a deep nicely to attract on. Somewhat greenhouse sheltered vegetation that might not survive the brief however harsh winter.

Zamir was so enthusiastic we didn’t have the guts to let him go, despite the fact that in these early days he was horticulturally clueless. With cauliflower ears from his ardour for wrestling, he appeared an unlikely gardener — a teen in what is usually an outdated man’s job. When work slowed as winter got here, Zamir made himself helpful serving tea to the Afghan workers within the compound.

He was decided to study, although. We apprenticed him to a World Bank gardener for some time, and on his personal he studied gardening and botany books. Our bureau supervisor on the time, the late Jane Scott-Long (an avid gardener herself), tutored him when she may.

We didn’t realize it on the time, however Zamir dropped out of the college as a result of he couldn’t work and sustain his research. That was unhappy, as a result of he was the primary highschool graduate in his prolonged household.

All of Zamir’s six siblings have been older and married, so he was the one his father trusted to take care of the remainder of the household. “He informed me to all the time maintain my mom,” Zamir says. She has diabetes, and is lame and partially deaf from a bomb strike close to their house throughout the civil conflict years of the 1980s and ’90s. Zamir additionally helps a nephew who lives with them.

“I really feel like I’m not getting outdated,” Zamir muses, “as a result of after I work I see the results of my work and its magnificence.” CreditKiana Hayeri for The New York TimesGardens are considered one of Kabul’s secret pleasures.CreditKiana Hayeri for The New York Times

Two rising seasons in the past The Times was obliged to maneuver into one other home in Kabul. The backyard there was a lot smaller: little greater than a mud patch some 70 ft by 25 ft. It was even tougher to justify a full-time gardener; we discovered Zamir one other shopper close by, so he may work for each of us half time.

By then, as Zamir tells it, he had come to like gardening: “Because it was my father’s occupation, it’s a solution to hold going with what he did, and it makes me really feel nearer to him.” Our depressing mud patch proved a blessing, a tabula rasa upon which Zamir may create no matter he wished.

The backyard isn’t usually the very first thing on our minds, as we cowl Afghanistan’s lengthy conflict. I didn’t discover what was occurring till sooner or later final 12 months I seemed out the window in entrance of my desk on the second ground to see the purple floral spike of a hollyhock at eye degree, a superb 12 ft above the flower beds. It would develop one other three ft earlier than succumbing to gravity. There have been sunflowers, too, that have been almost as tall. Rampant vines colonized the compound partitions, disguising a number of the ugliness of the inevitable fortifications.

With our backyard now in its second spring, the outcomes of Zamir’s labors are of their fullest flower. Bougainvillea, oleander, an arbor of honeysuckle, a number of types of matthiola and, all over the place, geraniums. Then in fact there are the roses. Deeply aromatic, usually huge, they may bloom into November right here. In each nook, there’s a pot of succulents.

Inside, bureau vases sprout with Zamir’s hand-plucked preparations. They look clever and even skilled; Jane, he says, confirmed him the way to organize the sprigs of inexperienced and sprays of little flowers to set off the bigger blooms. (He all the time used to deliver recent bouquets to Alissa J. Rubin, the bureau chief who employed him.)

“I really feel like I’m not getting outdated,” Zamir muses, “as a result of after I work I see the results of my work and its magnificence.” He’s all of 28 now. Some days when he leaves the bureau he stops first on the wrestling fitness center to coach; he wrestles within the 70 kilogram class and is Three-1 in formal matches. Other days he goes proper house to have a tendency the backyard his father made there; they’re poor, however wealthy in fruit and almond bushes.

Zamir just lately married. He let his mom select his bride, which he says was wise as a result of the ladies would have to spend so much of time collectively and it was much more essential that his spouse get alongside together with his mom than that she get together with him.

Before he died, Zamir’s father gave him a chunk of recommendation for when he was married: “Don’t overlook your mom.” So now, on events like Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day, Zamir brings house not one bouquet however two.

Bureau vases sprout with Zamir’s hand-plucked preparations. CreditKiana Hayeri for The New York TimesAssociated Coverage15 Years Ago: The Times Establishes a Bureau in KabulOct. 5, 2016In an Era of ‘Forever Wars,’ the Middle East Bureau Manager Who Made Our Coverage PossibleDec. 28, 2017First Thought at The Times’s Kabul Bureau: We Are Under AttackJune eight, 2017

Follow @RodNordland and @ReaderCenter on Twitter.

Rod Nordland is The Times bureau chief in Kabul, the place he has labored since 2011.